Compo’s son has told of his Brighton childhood in a newspaper interview published as the final series of Last of the Summer Wine is about to be aired.
Tom Owen, son of the late actor Bill Owen and his son in the long-running TV series too, described fishing with his father off the Palace Pier as a boy.
Owen, 61, also described being packed off to a West Sussex prep school and later Lancing College by his emotionally distant parents.
He told The Mail on Sunday: “Looking back it seems like we were two men who just happened to be father and son.
“There was no real bond between us.
“It was as though his emotions were closed off.”
His mother Edith and his father separated when Owen was 16, with his mother staying in Brighton.
Owen recalls Brighton actress Dora Bryan teaching him to dance and said that his famous father helped him in only once in his career.
Bill Owen, who died aged 85 in 1999, helped his son win a job as a student assistant stage manager in Leatherhead, Surrey, on £1 a week.
The younger Owen returns as Tom Simmonite in Last of the Summer Wine on BBC1 next Sunday.
More storeies like this please! I love a bit of Brighton history, and was pleased to learn that Steve Harley, off of The Cockney Rebels, was brought up in Hangleton Road a few houses from me. His earliest memory is being whisked by an aunt down to the Lagoon to play whilst his mum gave birth at home. “You’ve done it all”, he probably sang to her, upon his return.
I’m no fan, but having googled him for spelling, I found that his new album cover features him and band standing on a beach (probably not while anyone gives birth, this time)